Under Trump, the deregulations just keep coming — and banks are going to benefit

April 21, 2017 9:40PM (UTC)

President Donald Trump has made no secret of the fact that he wants to deregulate the big banks, but on Friday he took his deregulatory fetish to a whole new level.

The White House is issuing an executive order that will direct the Treasury Department to identify and reduce tax burdens, as well as review banking and insurance company reforms implemented after the 2008 economic crisis that those businesses complain are unfair, according to a report by Reuters.

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In addition to this executive order, Trump is also going to write up two memoranda that review parts of the Dodd-Frank Act, which was intended to reform Wall Street after the 2008 crisis. This will include a section of the law that pertains to whether the federal government can intervene during a fiscal emergency and how large banks can wind down in those scenarios, known as the Orderly Liquidation Authority, as well as a section that creates a panel comprised of powerful regulators known as the Financial Stability Oversight Council.

Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin will have 180 days to report to Trump on his findings regarding the liquidation authority. In addition, Mnuchin will review all major tax regulations imposed in 2016 to identify whether any of them are excessive for taxpayers, create unnecessary complexity, or go beyond the bounds of statutory authority.

House Speaker Paul Ryan is currently taking the charge on a much more ambitious tax reform plan, as tax reform was a key component of Trump's agenda during the 2016 campaign. That said, Ryan has made it clear that a proposal may not be ready until near the middle or end of 2017.

In the interim, Americans may quite likely see many more deregulatory executive orders like this one.

Matthew Rozsa

Matthew Rozsa is a breaking news writer for Salon. He holds an MA in History from Rutgers University-Newark and is ABD in his PhD program in History at Lehigh University. His work has appeared in Mic, Quartz and MSNBC.